debra: next up, it's the pandemic that has touched millions--aids. 30 years after the first confirmed cases appeared, where are we now? and what's working in hiv prevention? find out in a scial rept from p and viewchange.org. announcer: "viewchange" is about people making real progress in tackling the world's toughest issues. can a story change the world? see for yourself in "viewchange: hiv prevention-- looking back and moving forward." debra: i'm debra messing, ambassador for psi. it's been 30 years since the cenrs for disease control confirmed the first cases of hiv in the united states. since 1981, more than 30 million

people around the world have died of aids-related causes, particularly in the developing world, where the disease has devastated entire families, communities, and generations. buthanks tthe medical advancement of anti-retro viral therapy and progress in prevention, saving lives is now possible. aid groups and governments have been working hard to bring innovative hiv prevention methods and tools to scale. and it's working. in mozambique, one young relationship counselor is getting creative. working with a local radio show, she's finding ways to make condoms exciting, and even sexy. [man singing in native language] narrator: like all countries in southern africa, mozambique suffers from hiv-aids. every year, millions of dollars are spent on prevention campaigns, including promoting

condoms. but the battle is far from won, and one person thinks she knows why. [indistinct chatter] sheila: i don't know how many students there are. maybe 8,000. to pick up condoms, i have the records here. maybe a hundred per month. narrator: at the northeast secondary school in the capital maputo, 22 year old sheila is a trained sexual health counselor. [indistinct chatter] in her office, young people come to her with their intimate problems. man: i am having a problem with my girlfriend. sheila: and you did not use a condom? man: often we don't use it.

sheila: because you trusted her? man: i risked it because i trusted her, but i mis-trusted heat the same time. narrator: the message is clear--selling condoms as barriers against hiv can suggest couples don't trust each other. so sheila is convinced it's easier to sell condoms as contraceptives. today in her office, she's tearing down the public health posters. for sheila, condoms are the main weapon against hiv-aids. but they must have the right image. the unbranded white condoms are the ones distributed in schools and clinics. much better, she says, those more sexy branded ones. sheila lives at her grandma's. a church-going christian, she wants to train as a lawyer. she says what some in the big health agencies think privately. sheila: whoo! the condom is too associated

with hiv. and so it's become stigmatized in the people's minds. narrator: she's backed by market research, which shows trust in relationships is the main reason for not using condoms. sheila knows sex and romance sell, so why not use them to promote condoms. she's workg on a rio progr try heressage oa wider audience. it's for 99 fm, a popular national radio station. today is the big sell. sheila: i'm very nervous. i'm in the hands of god. [groans]

narrator: sheila's off to see the head of the station, but will he buy her maverick message? sheila: my idea is to make a pilot program. station manager: yesterday, i attended a [indistinct] in chibuto. they had a box with condoms, like this one. i didn't want to take any. sheila: exactly. station manager: but what are we going to say in the program? no to the aids condom, or are we going to say, aids condom, yes? sheila: no, our objective is to say yes to the condom. narrator: not only have they given her air time, 99 fm have given sheila her own team. their slogan, "for your up moments." [woman singing in native language] sheila: [speaking native language] narrator: public health campaigns find it difficult to link condoms with pleasure. ma: [speaking native language] [woman speaking native language]

narrator: but can you really sell condoms better branding them with sex than with illness? sheila: [speaking native language narrator: early morning, and time to take the show on the road. today, to chinavane, 100 kilometers north of maputo. for her program, sheila wants people to talk openly about their sex lives. she hopes their stories will reveal why they should use condoms. [indistinct chatter] she's taking the message to the local school to see how it plays. sheila: our mothers fell pregnant at the age of 14, 15, 16, 17. they lived their sexuality. at the moment, they felt the time had come. i want you to tell me, what do you do to live your sexuality without having

the same problems our mothers had? ah? what did you say? boy: i use the condom. sheila: you use the condom. thank you. ping pong, another one. what do you do? [all speaking native language] second boy: condom. sheila: huh? second boy: condom! sheila: condom. [all speaking native language] girl: be faithful to my boyfriend. sheila: be faithful to your boyfriend. i have to be faithful to my boyfriend, but i also have to be faithful to the condom, because the day my boyfriend drops me, the condom will stay with me.

debra: in india, where millions are living with hiv, reaching at-risk populations through peer education is crucial. and as this story shows, the most powerful messengers for hiv awareness come from unlikely places. [crowd yelling]

[singing]

debra: operating in 67 countries around the world, psi is one global health organization at the forefront of hiv prevention. psi believes that health services and products are most effective when they're accompanied by robust communications, which ensure that people are widely accepting and using prevention methods. d they found that some of the best communicators about safer sex and hiv prevention are not necessarily the typical experts. for example, hair dressers in zimbabwe are chipping in with their own straight talk to patrons, and have helped zimbabwe cut its hiv infection rate by half. last year, i traveled with psi to visit one special salon in zimbabwe,

where women are sharing life-saving information with one another. truly unforgettable. narrator: as the economy in zimbabwe begins to recover after years of chronic mismanagement and hyper inflation, there are also encouraging signs of a decrease in hiv prevalence. in a country where over one million children have been orphaned by aids. now, an innovative hiv prevention program is showing remarkable success by using hairdressers to teach their female customers the facts about hiv and aids. but in a country with a collapsed medical infrastructure, the burden of hiv and aids is massive. there are around 60,000 deaths from aids each year, and an estimated 1,200 new infections each week. experts in zimbabwe say prevention

through behavior change is the key to managing the spread of the disease. kumbirai: when you talk about behavior change, the key word there is changing. changing from the way--what you used to do to a new behavior. we want people to adopt safer sexual behaviors. it could be condom use, it could be [indistinct], it could be having fewer partners. all that for us is behavior change. anything that you do to protect yourself from hiv infection. narrator: but in a male-dominated society like zimbabwe, reaching women with the correct information and empowering them to make decisions can be difficult. wendy: generally, women are the more vulnerable sex, and when it comes to making decisions related with sexual health, men are the dominant character. so they, for women, don't have much of a say. narrator: as a result, 60% of all people living with hiv in zimbabwe are women.

dorothy nancapa is a hairdresser in kuwadzana, a low income, high density suburb of the capital harare. dorothy is one of 1,500 hairdressers that have been trained as an hiv peer educator in a program run by populations services international and funded by the u.k.'s department for international development. in this way, hairdressers like dorothy have sold over 3 million female condoms in the last six years, preventing thousands of new hiv infections. barbara niamdocka, a regular at the salon, began using the female condom with her husband obert two years ago.

this initiative is spreading across zimbabwe. sylvester nazarus runs a barbershop from his backyard in the commuter town of chitungwiza, south of harare. here, men are also being exposed to the prevention message and the benefits of condom use. while huge challenges remain in zimbabwe, the success of programs like this has contributed to a significant decline in hiv prevalence. it dropped from over 24 percent to less than 14 percent over the last six years. debra: but how will we really achieve large scale change? one of the ways is by promoting hiv prevention methods that are easily affordable, highly

effective, and are able to show results now. methods like voluntary male circumcision, which can reduce heterosexual hiv transmission by 60 percent. but first, grown men must be convinced to overcome their fears, as we see in this story. announcer: right, tim. remember that we have to work at winning this match as a team. circumcision cannot win this match alone. he needs the help of all of the defenders to keep hiv from scoring.

fungai: my name is fungai. near where i stay, there's a very big billboard encouraging male circumcision. so i just decided one day that i should do it. i'm...shaking a little bit. i have goosebumps. i think the procedure's going to go well. i've learned a lot about male circumcision. they say it has a 60 percent chance of hiv reduction. takavingwa: my name is takavingwa [indistinct]. my wife encouraged me to come to mc, because she actually thought it good for me to be circumcised. some of my friends say, ahh, you can go at your own risk. i'm curious to know what's going to happen after i am circumcised.

as you can see, i am now coming out of the psi room. the circumcision is all done, and ifeel like a man. it has been very good, and is not as painful as i thought. fungai: the whole procedure was just fine. jabulani: one of the best benefits is, uh, the reduction of the hiv-aids transmission rate. that actually gave me the zeal to go for it, because i felt that would be the best opportunity for me to prevent

myself and the person that i love from contracting such infections. steven: i have since introduced some of my team members to be circumcised. everyone now knows that i'm proud to be circumcised. delfin: it opens up dialogue within, firstly, the relationship, which is not common in our environment. molebogeng: so this both our decision. and i decided to accompany him as a support system. and also i heard about the importance of male circumcision. jabulani: what i learned is people are not well-educated. they have a belief that it's cultural. delfin: dialogue needs to spread further than just young couples.

jabulani: it is the right channel to reduce the hiv-aids pandemic in our nation. steven: a lot of things have changed in my life. besides the confidence that i have, i also feel much more secure. debra: targeting behavior is also crucial in hiv prevention. in kenya, people are talking about mpango wa kando, roughly translated into having a long term relationship on the side. it's an all too common arrangement that also happens to be one of the riskiest behaviors for hiv transmission. but the government ofenya, tother with usaid and other groups, are using mass media to change this behavior and turn the tide of hiv transmission.

nicholas: 44 percent of new hiv patients attributed currently people who either married or in a partnership. these people in partnerships both have other partners, who also have other partners who are not using condoms. and therefore,

the chance that the next network someone has hiv and it spreads like bushfire to the rest of the families. jimmi: i must admit, one of the things that surprised me was the aspect of also women playing a part of it. nicholas: we've got this strong force, people say, no, no, no, you are [indistinct] men only. women also do that. so people didn't know that, so we did some spots for women as well. erick: concurrent partrship rely is areat facr in thepread ofiv, becae you find that, this people, when they have these partners, trust comes in. so we find that these partners stop using condoms basically to all

the partners. lucy: psi kenya decided to take on the campaign because primarily, there are very few organizations that do national level mass media communications. tony: for this particular video, it became quite an interesting angle to us, social marketing. we've got a subject that's supposed to be to improve the lives of the people that we're trying to talk to. lucy: we pre-tested various concepts, various tag lines, various names, and eventually we came up with mpango wa kando, which was actually what people felt describes this loving, long-term side relationship. jimmi: somebody needs to say something, and so i did. wambui: [speaking native language] tony: shock transmits, then, to how important this campaign is. tony: it makes sense. it's logical. and i think that's what really made the campaign work, that it's real, it's a social message.

nicholas: mpango wa kando campaign is obviously achieving its goal. part of the goal is to stimulate debate. so you'll hear people discuss it in pubs, in formal outings, in the church. these were never, never discussed. tom: they identify with the campaign and then now the discussions start. the good thing is that they are coming together and talking about it... and finding solutions to it. [all speaking native language] lucy: looking at what will motivate people now to move from awareness to actual behavior change. jimmi: look around. all families, all kenyans, don't want hiv. so the more we discuss and told them, you know what, you cannot talk about the issue of hiv and not talk about the issue of concurrent multi partnerships. lucy: for me, success in the long term for this campaign

would be lower hiv prevalence amongst people in married, co-habitating relationships. jimmi: it's something that cannot be done overnight. it's something that we work on it until it becomes a social norm change that discourages people from having concurrent multiple partnerships. debra: thanks to prevention and treatment, the global rate of new hiv infections has dropped by 25 percent between 2001 and 2009. around the world, we're learning lessons from innovators in every sector. we're learning to adopt messages that equate change with something everyone wants-- a happier life. we're learning to invest in local talent, because they know how to reach their neighbors and what motivates them to change. and on the soccer field or at the hair salon, we learn that reinforcing the right messages about hiv-aids is making a difference. [all singing in native language]

man: want to learn more about hiv treatment, prevention, or anything else you saw here? head over to viewchange.org/tv, where you can watch, read, and get involved in projects that are making a real difference. watch the films you just saw, and over 350 more from around the world, at viewchange.org/tv.